Midnight writing

My little brother is serving a mission in Uruguay for our church.  Every Monday he gets to check his email.  I'm usually pretty good at remembering to send him a message but I forgot last week.  So I really wanted to remember to write him this week.

Last night when I was nursing Porter I remembered I hadn't emailed Tyler yet.  "It's my lucky day!" I thought as I glanced at the clock and saw that it was 1:50 AM.  I could still send him an email and he'd get it!  (Right now there's a 5 hour time difference between us and Uruguay and he checks his email pretty early in the day.)

Later this morning when I read his letter to the family he said a few things that made me think maybe he didn't get my email.  I was positive I sent him a newsy message.  So I checked my "Sent Mail" to make sure I sent the letter to the correct address.

I did send the email to the right place.  But here is the text of my email, copied verbatim (and I want you to know it was typed with one hand, so please forgive the typos):


"Dear Ty,

Merry Christmas!  We're all so excited to talk to you this next week!  

We're doing well.  The semester anf finals ended for Nate last Thursday.  He is enjoying time ff until January.  He quit his Dominos drive but so far they haven't noticed a big uptick in left since he died.

Christmas really snuck up on me this year!  I guess having a baby will do that to you.

love , Katie"

When I was a kid

When I was a kid, gas was under a dollar per gallon.

It was always in the ninety cent range but it was still less than a dollar.  Other things that were a dollar or less: a dozen eggs, apples (even out of season), and movies from Redbox.  (Okay, Redbox wasn't around when I was a kid, but the movies were just $1 when Redbox started.)

The summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college I remember the price of gas increased drastically-it reached the $1.50/gallon range.  I distinctly remember thinking, "Man, gas is getting expensive.  I'll have to cut down on my visits home during the school year!"

Did I?  No.

In fact, I think I started driving MORE.

The summer I bought my car, gas prices reached $4 a gallon.  I took public transit to work for a while until I realized it was still cheaper for me to drive than to pay to ride the train.  Take that for what it's worth, UTA.

Yesterday I bought gas for $2.999 a gallon.  Sure, it rounds to $3 per gallon but I LOVED seeing the 2 in the dollar position.  It felt amazing to buy gas for "less" than $3 a gallon!  I wanted to shout my good fortune from the housetops.  And I wanted to share with Porter that when I was a kid we would have been shocked to pay more than $1 per gallon of gas.  Or at least more than $1.10 per gallon.

So now that I have declared my good fortune, maybe I'll take yesterdays savings and rent some movies from Redbox!

First-timers

When we were preparing to leave the hospital I wanted to make sure Porter would be warm.  So I bundled him up in a warm sleeper and two blankets before we took him out to the car:

Of course I hadn't been outside for 2 days and I didn't know it was unseasonably warm for being the day before Thanksgiving.  I was shedding layers of coats and jackets as I got into the car.  I think Porter was warm enough!

We stopped on our way home to get Nate some lunch.  I'd been riding in the back seat with Porter (after being made fun of by the nurse - "You'll have plenty of time to look at him," she said when she helped me into the backseat) but after our stop I decided to ride shotgun where there is more leg room. 

On our hour-long drive home, I started to worry because I hadn't heard anything from the back seat.  Was my baby still alive??  I tried craning my neck to see, but to no avail.  Then I remembered, "Hey!  I have a cell phone!  And it has a camera!" So, being ever resourceful, I decided to snap a picture of him to make sure he could breathe. 

I took the picture and then looked at it.  I was slightly shocked at what I saw:

This isn't exactly what you want to see when you're headed home for the first time with your baby.  

We hadn't taken him out of his car seat when we were getting Nate lunch so I knew he still had to be in there.  After all, I had pictures that proved we'd put him in the seat in the first place (see above).

So I was rather panicked for the rest of the ride home.  We stopped at Walgreens to fill a prescription and I jumped into the back seat where I saw my poor baby with his head flopped down onto his body.  It is amazing how little babies can bend!

I straightened his neck out and then proceeded to watch him.  Nate came back to the car (he'd run the prescription in to get it filled) and he said we had 15 minutes before it would be ready.  So he also climbed into the back seat on the other side of Porter and we stared at Porter for the next 15 minutes.

First-time parents?  Yep.

When the prescription was ready Nate ran back in to get it.  Then we drove the rest of the way home.  

I sat in the back with Porter.  No more head-flopping on my watch!